Connecticut Car Accident Settlements: Uncollectible Shares

Every several-liability state guide on this site raises the same unanswered problem: what happens when one defendant simply can’t pay their share? Connecticut is one of the few states that wrote an actual answer into the statute.

Quick answer: Connecticut uses modified comparative negligence (C.G.S. § 52-572h(b)), and your fault is compared against the combined fault of all defendants — not each one individually. Defendants are severally liable by default (§ 52-572h(g)(1)), each paying only their own share. But if a share proves uncollectible, § 52-572h(g)(2) lets a court reallocate it among the remaining defendants by relative fault — requiring good faith efforts to collect and a motion filed within one year of final judgment. Economic and noneconomic damages use different reallocation formulas. The filing deadline is 2 years; minimum insurance is 25/50/25 with matching UM/UIM.

Your Fault Is Compared to the Defendants’ Combined Fault

Connecticut’s comparative negligence rule under C.G.S. § 52-572h(b) carries a structural detail that matters enormously in multi-defendant cases: recovery is barred only if your fault exceeds the combined fault of all the defendants, not any single defendant’s share.

The practical effect is genuinely favorable. Suppose you’re found 40% at fault, with two defendants at 30% each. Compared against either defendant individually, your 40% is greater — and in a state that made that comparison, you’d recover nothing. In Connecticut, your 40% does not exceed their combined 60%, so you recover, reduced by your 40%. Hawaii applies the same aggregate-comparison approach; most states covered on this site do not spell it out this clearly.

Several Liability by Default — Then a Real Answer to the Collection Problem

Under C.G.S. § 52-572h(g)(1), Connecticut joint tortfeasors are severally liable: each pays only their own proportionate share. That’s the same starting point as Arizona, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin — and each of those guides has to end the same unsatisfying way: if a co-defendant is insolvent or uninsured, the claimant generally absorbs that share as a loss.

Connecticut wrote a fix. Under § 52-572h(g)(2), when a defendant’s proportionate share proves uncollectible, the court can reallocate that amount among the remaining defendants according to their relative degrees of fault. This is a genuinely different posture from simply telling a claimant their judgment is partly uncollectable and that’s the end of it.

The Two Requirements That Gate Reallocation

The mechanism is real but conditional, and both conditions are strict:

1. Good faith efforts to collect. You must have genuinely attempted to collect from the liable defendant before asking the court to shift the burden.
2. A motion filed within one year. The motion to open the judgment must be filed not later than one year after the judgment becomes final — through lapse of time or exhaustion of appeal, whichever occurs later.

On the first requirement, the standard matters: Connecticut courts treat “good faith efforts” as a subjective, factual determination, and the legislature deliberately chose that phrase over the objective “reasonable efforts” standard. The question is whether you genuinely tried, not whether a hypothetical reasonable claimant would have tried harder — which is why contemporaneous documentation of every collection attempt is worth keeping from the start rather than reconstructing later.

Two Different Formulas: Economic vs. Noneconomic

The statute does not reallocate both damage categories the same way, and the difference can be substantial:

• Noneconomic damages — reallocated among the other defendants according to their percentages of negligence, subject to a cap: no defendant may be reallocated more than that defendant’s percentage of negligence multiplied by the uncollectible amount.
• Economic damages — reallocated using a fraction: the defendant’s percentage of negligence over the total percentages of all defendants, excluding the defendant whose share is being reallocated. Because the denominator drops the uncollectible defendant out, this formula can shift a larger amount to a remaining defendant than the capped noneconomic formula allows.

The upshot for a claimant: the recoverable portion of an uncollectible share is generally greater on the economic damages side (medical bills, lost income) than on the noneconomic side. This is a different economic/noneconomic split from California’s Proposition 51, which divides the two categories at the outset rather than at the reallocation stage — but both reflect the same underlying policy instinct that a claimant’s out-of-pocket losses deserve stronger collection protection than pain and suffering.

Illustrative Connecticut Settlement Ranges

Connecticut’s reallocation mechanism improves the odds of actually collecting a multi-defendant judgment compared to a pure several-liability state — but it operates only after judgment, on motion, and within the one-year window, so it should not be treated as a guarantee when modeling a settlement.

Connecticut’s Minimum Insurance Requirements

Connecticut requires 25/50/25: $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for bodily injury liability, plus $25,000 for property damage, under C.G.S. §§ 14-112 and 38a-335 — with uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage required at the same limits.

Deadlines in Connecticut

Claim	Deadline
Personal injury lawsuit	2 years from the date of injury
Motion to reallocate an uncollectible share	1 year after judgment becomes final (lapse of time or exhaustion of appeal, whichever is later)
Wrongful death	Confirm the specific deadline, which differs from the general injury period
Claims against a government entity	Shorter notice periods generally apply — confirm immediately

Practical Checklist for a Connecticut Crash

1. Identify every potentially liable defendant and push for precise fault percentages — both reallocation formulas run directly off those numbers.
2. Document every collection attempt contemporaneously against any defendant who isn’t paying, since “good faith efforts” is a factual question you will have to prove.
3. Calendar the one-year reallocation window from the date judgment becomes final, not from the verdict — and remember it runs from exhaustion of appeal if that comes later.
4. Don’t assume a co-defendant’s insolvency is simply your loss, as it generally would be in most several-liability states.
5. Track economic and noneconomic damages separately, since the reallocation formulas treat them differently and the economic side can recover more.
6. Calculate your two-year filing deadline and diary it now.

Sources & Further Reading

• C.G.S. § 52-572h — Connecticut’s negligence statute: the combined-fault comparison in subsection (b), several liability in (g)(1), and the uncollectible-share reallocation mechanism, formulas, good faith efforts requirement and one-year motion deadline in (g)(2)
• C.G.S. §§ 14-112 and 38a-335 — minimum liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage requirements
• See our guides to Arizona, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin car accident settlements for four several-liability states without a reallocation mechanism, and California car accident settlements for a different way of splitting economic from noneconomic damages among multiple defendants